While Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has taken the global box office by storm and shattered numerous records — the film raced past the $1 billion mark in just over two weeks — it hasn’t connected with audiences in one major market, South Korea. Some observers cite cultural differences as the reason …

If you ask any Chinese indie auteur for their own favorite film festival, expect to be directed to the city of Xining, China’s historic gateway to the vast Tibetan Plateau. Here, in a now-teaming city in the foothills of the world’s tallest mountains, the FIRST International Film Festival has carved …

Tom Cruise failed to do the seemingly impossible in China over the weekend: Revive Hollywood’s former box-office muscle at the world’s second-biggest theatrical movie market.  Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One badly lost its opening weekend in China, debuting in third place behind a pair of holdover Chinese hits.  The …

Editor’s Note: Studio Ghibli took the unprecedented step of doing no marketing in Japan for Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, releasing no trailers and no plot summary. Instead, the fabled studio invited fans to go see the movie with no preconceptions, with producer Toshio Suzuki saying, “Deep down, …

Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos will never forget the day he met director Bong Joon Ho in 2017 to discuss Okja, the sci-fi action drama that became Netflix’s first international film.  “He’s the ultimate master, and he gave me a crash course in Korean cinema. I learned so much,” he said. …

The Little Mermaid may have bombed in some key movie markets in Asia, but in the Philippines, it has been a splashy success. Disney’s live-action remake of its 1989 animated classic is currently the biggest blockbuster of the year in the Southeast Asian country, having earned $5.8 million and surpassed …

Less than four months from the opening ceremony of the 28th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), widely considered Asia’s most influential festival, the event remains mired in turmoil, with insiders increasingly agitating for a generational change. Korean industry figures tell The Hollywood Reporter they are worried both about the immediate …

With movie ticket sales still lagging behind pre-pandemic highs, multiplex operators across Asia have begun deploying unconventional strategies to generate excitement and attract people back to the cinema. Total theatrical revenue in the Asia-Pacific region was about $10.1 billion in 2022, down from $17.8 billion during the pre-pandemic year of …

The pioneering Far East Film Festival (FEFF), held annually in the picturesque Northern Italian city of Udine, continued making history with its 25th-anniversary edition this year. At the closing ceremony on Sunday, Malaysian drama Abang Adik, written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Jin Ong, achieved a clean sweep of …

Italy’s Far East Film Festival unveiled a power-packed lineup Wednesday for its 25th anniversary edition. The largest cinema event in Europe specializing in popular moviemaking from Asia, FEFF will open on April 21 with an inspired double-bill, He Shuming’s hit Korea-Singapore co-production Ajoomma followed by first-time Taiwanese director Kai Ko’s …

French president Emmanuel Macron is set to kick off a three-day trip to Beijing this week, a high-stakes diplomatic mission that will be a delicate balancing act between urging Chinese leader Xi Jinping to alter his stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and maintaining France’s trade priorities. The French delegation accompanying …

Director Byun Sung-hyun was baffled when he first learned that his feature film Kill Boksoon would be invited to the Berlin International Film Festival last month.  “I didn’t expect it at all,” he said at a press conference for Kill Boksoon held in Seoul earlier this month. “I thought Kill …